Collaborate Disseminate
The bill tasks the Department of Commerce with creating new export rules.
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The National Security Agency’s inspector general said Tuesday that it would conduct a review related to allegations that the agency had improperly surveilled Fox News host Tucker Carlson — allegations the agency has denied. The review will look at NSA’s compliance with legal authorities and procedures related to data collection and analysis, including so-called “unmasking” procedures, in which U.S. officials can request the identity of an American citizen cited in an intelligence document. The probe will cover whether any actions taken by the NSA “were based upon improper considerations,” Inspector General Robert Storch said in a statement. Carlson in June accused the NSA of surveilling in him in a bid to “take this show off the air.” The NSA, whose mission is to collect foreign intelligence, flatly denied the allegation in a June 29 statement. “Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the agency and the NSA has […]
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President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday directing federal agencies to conduct a review of supply chain security risks in industries including information technology. While a significant goal of the order is to address shortages of a wide assortment of critical imported components such as electric batteries and pharmaceuticals, it does include a mandated review of the information and communications technology sector. A prominent justification for the review is a desire to rely less on semiconductors manufactured overseas. Biden, at a news conference to herald his signing of the executive order, said “we need to make sure these supply chains are secure and reliable.” It’s an issue, he said, “of both concern for economic security as well as our national security.” Espionage remains a significant concern, as well, after hackers leveraged access in a federal contractor to gather sensitive from throughout the U.S. government. The supply chain danger […]
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The federal agency charged with supporting small U.S. businesses should take “immediate action” to ensure that such firms are adequately protected from cyberthreats emanating from Iran, a bipartisan pair of senators said Wednesday. “We are concerned that small businesses may not have the information and tools necessary” to implement cybersecurity practices recommended by the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the U.S. killing of Iran’s top general, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., wrote in a letter to the Small Business Administration. The advisory from DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned of Iran’s history of “disruptive and destructive cyber operations against strategic targets” and advised U.S. organizations to consider whether they make an attractive target for the Iranians. According to the FBI, those potential private-sector targets include cleared defense contractors. Security experts have also advised organizations not to overreact to potential cyberthreats from Iran. Ned […]
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The National Security Agency has started to lay the groundwork and select the leadership for its new Cybersecurity Directorate, which will be focused on fusing together signals intelligence with the agency’s cybersecurity protection mission, CyberScoop has learned. Neal Ziring, who most recently served as the NSA’s technical director for capabilities, will be the Cybersecurity Directorate’s technical director, an NSA spokesperson tells CyberScoop. Dave Frederick, the NSA’s chief of strategic counter cyber operations, will be the new deputy director, an NSA spokesperson said. In his most recent role, Ziring was responsible for acting as a liaison to both private industry and other government agencies. Ziring previously served as the technical director of the agency’s defensive operations directorate, the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD). Frederick was responsible for coordinating defensive and offensive cyber missions. NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone announced the new Cybersecurity Directorate earlier this week. It will be run by Anne […]
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Facebook’s early May takedown of a Russian political disinformation operation was much larger than previously thought, according to research published this weekend by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. The Russian-linked actors behind the campaign went well beyond just amplifying political narratives on Facebook, and in fact began much earlier by planting false stories and then later amplifying these fake stories using fake accounts. In one case, these Russian-linked actors impersonated Sen. Marco Rubio’s Twitter account in a tweet that made it look like he was disparaging Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters. Then-Defense Secretary of the UK Gavin Williams was also victim to a similar photoshop effort. One of the false stories that the Russian trolls created and amplified through fake accounts includes a storyline that a Spanish intelligence agency rooted out an anti-Brexit pilot to assassinate Boris Johnson. Johnson is now in the running to serve as the UK’s next prime minister. As many Russian-linked […]
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The Department of Homeland Security should assess the security threat posed by foreign VPN applications to U.S. government employees, a bipartisan pair of senators says. Some popular VPN apps send a phone’s web-browsing data to servers in countries interested in targeting federal personnel, raising “the risk that user data will be surveilled by those foreign governments,” Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in a letter to DHS Thursday. VPN providers promise to obfuscate the physical location of a web browser, but users are generally at the mercy of those companies’ decisions to collect and log data. The senators cite government warnings about products made by Chinese telecommunications companies and Russian antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab as examples of the surveillance that certain foreign technology can enable. (Kaspersky and Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE have denied those allegations.) “If U.S. intelligence experts believe Beijing and Moscow are leveraging Chinese and Russian-made technology to surveil Americans, […]
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In yet another sign that the hacking abilities of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are drawing intense scrutiny from U.S. spy agencies and law enforcement, top federal officials focused on cyberspace Tuesday as part of a broader hearing on the global threats facing the United States. The digital tools and techniques deployed by U.S. adversaries and competitors are “growing in potency and severity,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, we expect these actors and others to rely more and more on cyber capabilities” to advance their interests, Coats said. FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that nation-states are increasingly collaborating with criminal hackers in a “form of outsourcing that makes it even more of a menace.” The annual hearing gives the public a snapshot of the threats at the forefront of U.S. intelligence chiefs’ minds, and hacking allegedly backed by […]
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Two senators are trying to create a central government entity to deal with supply chain security and strategize over how to keep U.S. technologies safe from foreign theft in a bill introduced on Friday. The bill, from Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. and Mark Warner, D-Va., seeks to create a White House Office of Critical Technologies and Security. The new entity would take the lead in strategizing and coordinating across agencies to “protect against state-sponsored technology theft and risks to critical supply chains.” The proposed bill comes as the government increases pressure on China for allegedly using its corporate presence and workers in the U.S. to steal intellectual property. The Justice Department in December unsealed indictments against two Chinese citizens for allegedly spying on dozens of U.S. companies and agencies by hacking managed service providers. The White House is also weighing a ban on American companies’ use of technology bought from […]
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Earlier this month, news broke that one of Apple’s most popular paid applications had been surreptitiously collecting user data and browser history and sending it to a server in China. On Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio wrote to Apple demanding answers on why it reportedly took the tech giant weeks to address the issue. “For a company that prides itself on prioritizing user privacy and security, this delayed response is extremely disconcerting,” Rubio, R-Fla., wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook. The application in question is Adware Doctor, a scanning tool that offers to remove adware from Mac computers. After security researchers published evidence on Sept. 7 that Adware Doctor was violating Apple’s data collection and storage rules, the company pulled it from the Mac App Store. But that was nearly a month after researcher @privacyis1st said he alerted Apple to the issue. Rubio, who has repeatedly raised national security concerns about technology […]
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